Not Meant to Be
by Bobbi Johnson
Summary: [Because mistiming and misunderstandings lead to missed opportunities, and they find themselves sitting alone and wondering what they could have been.] Fabian and Nina try to get back in touch two years after she left Anubis House, but maybe it just wasn't meant to be.


**Hey everyone!**

 **This is just something that I came up with while I was at work, bored out of my brains because we couldn't leave until the last table finished their coffees. We were listening to the radio while we waited, and _Hello_ by Adele came on (is it worrying that I've begun to judge songs based on how relate-able they are to Fabina?). This idea just popped into my head. **

**It's only loosely based on the song, but I can tell you it doesn't have a happy ending (if you didn't already guess that based on the title). I don't usually write or even read stuff like this because of how much I love Fabina, but there's a first time for everything.**

 **Anyway, enough of my talking. Onto the story!**

 **Disclaimer: While I was thinking of this and waiting for the people to finish I called up and tried to get ownership of HoA, but no such luck. Sorry guys, I still don't own House of Anubis.**

* * *

Nina drummed her fingers impatiently on her desk as she listened to the phone ring, waiting for the person on the other end to pick up. Once… twice… three times…

"Hello," Nina perked up at the sound, but her happiness was to be short lived. "You've reached Fabian Rutter's phone. You know the drill, leave a message after the tone and… yeah."

With that there was a beep. Nina just sat there for a moment, unsure of what to say. "Um… hey, it's me. Nina, that is. I mean, you probably guessed that, 'cause I'm pretty sure I'm the only American that you know… except for Eddie, of course, but I don't really sound anything like him, and I'm pretty sure I'm just rambling now, so… yeah, I'll get to the point. I was thinking maybe we should… you know… talk, about…stuff. So… yeah, call me… if you want, that is, I mean I get if you-"

There was a second beep to say that the message had reached its full capacity. Not wanting to go through that again, she let the message go through and hung up.

* * *

"Fabian!"

Fabian groaned, pushing back his pile of homework at the sound of his sister's voice. Deciding it was going to be impossible to get all his assignments done with everyone in the house, he got up and went in pursuit of the source of the sound.

He found Annika in the kitchen, balancing their five-year-old niece on her hip as she tried to flip a pancake with the other hand. It was working out surprisingly well, but then Annika had been looking after Mollie full time since she was a month old.

"What's up?" he asked, leaning on the doorway.

"Your phone rang," Annika told him, gesturing with her egg-flipper to where his mobile was sitting on the bench.

"Did you see who it was?" he frowned, unsure of who would be calling him in the morning on a Sunday.

She hesitated for a moment, apparently trying to remember. "She was in your contacts. Nina something, I think."

Fabian looked at her, confused. "Are you sure?"

Annika shrugged. "See for yourself."

He picked up his phone, and sure enough the words _'1 Missed Call: Nina Martin'_ appeared on the screen when he pressed the lock button. "It must have just been a pocket dial," he decided. After all, why would she be calling him now, having ignored his calls and text messages for so long?

"She left a voicemail," Annika told him, watching his reaction closely now. "Who is she anyway?"

Fabian sighed, not really in the mood to talk about the girl who had given him so much and then disappeared from his life with nothing more than a letter in explanation. It was coming on two years now since he had last seen her, but the memories still hurt nonetheless. "My ex," he announced eventually.

Annika frowned in confusion. "I thought her name was Mara."

"Different ex," Fabian explained.

"You mean you've had more than one girlfriend?" she asked, half surprised and half amused. "How many more are there that we don't know about?"

"How could you not know about Nina?" they both turned around to see another of their sisters, Bethany, standing in the doorway. "She was all Fabian ever talked about. Nina _this_ and Nina _that_. He drove us all half to death."

"That was the year Annie went on holiday to Scotland," Fabian explained quickly, eager to move on to a different topic of conversation. "Anyway, I'm pretty sure she didn't mean to call me, so I'm just going to delete the message and pretend like this never happened."

"Not on my watch you're not," seventeen-year-old Bethany announced, snatching the phone off him and raising it to her ear, despite her brother's protests. Her two siblings and her niece watched intently as she listened.

"So?" Annika asked once she removed the phone from her ear. "What did she say?"

Bethany paused, and Fabian could feel his heartrate speed up. Was it possible that she actually _had_ intended to call him?

"Her name's Rhiannon," she announced eventually, her tone serious.

"Who?" Fabian asked, confused.

"Your daughter, Fabian," she explained, still in the same tone. "Nina thought you should know."

"What?" he looked between his sisters in shock. "But… how?"

"I think we all _know_ how," Annika smirked.

"But," Fabian was still struggling to form a complete sentence. "We were really careful…"

At that, Bethany burst out laughing. "Woah, TMI Fabian. I was just kidding."

"Wait, what?"

"It was a joke," she laughed. "But you should have seen your face. Priceless."

Fabian folded his arms across his chest indignantly. "Well I'm sorry, but after everything that happened _last time_ someone in this family got pregnant, I was pretty sure Mum would kill me."

Annika nodded, giggling. "I'm pretty sure she would have killed Anya, if she hadn't done it herself before Mum got the chance."

This comment immediately brought the mood down. The trio stood in silence for a moment, the only sound the sizzling of pancakes in the background.

"So what did she really call for?" Fabian asked eventually, trying to relieve the tension in the room.

Bethany shrugged. "She wanted to talk about 'stuff'," she explained, making quotation marks in the air.

"Oh," Fabian said, more than a little confused. "Okay then," he shrugged, taking the phone back and leaving the room.

* * *

Fabian looked around the airport. He couldn't believe that he was actually in America, soon to be reunited with his ex-best friend/girlfriend.

Granted, she hadn't replied to the voicemail he'd left her when he'd called back, but he figured she must have been busy.

(He would never have guessed that it was because he'd accidently hung up before he'd left the message, and that she'd never gotten it.)

He'd decided that if she wasn't going to reply, he was just going to waltz over there to see her himself.

" _Now_ will you call her again?" Annika huffed from behind him, holding Mollie's hand tightly. "I mean, for all we know we could be on the complete wrong side of the country."

Admittedly, she was right. Fabian had taken a punt and gotten them flights to California, seeing as that was the only place he could remember Nina ever mentioning. He actually had no idea where she lived.

"Fine," he huffed, getting out his phone. He brought up the keypad, pressed on her speed dial and put the phone up to his ear.

The call went straight through to voicemail though, so her mobile must have been off. Either that or she'd immediately rejected the call, but that didn't make any sense seeing as she'd been the one to make the first move.

Sighing, he put his phone back into his pocket and went back over to where his sister and niece were waiting.

* * *

Nina was in anything but a good mood. After Fabian had failed to respond to her message, she had decided to go over to England to see him. But despite her best efforts she hadn't been able to get her hand on his address, and she was far too prideful to contact any of the other ex-Anubis residents. So she'd come back, upset and alone.

She wasn't looking where she was going, and soon found herself crashing into another, much smaller, person.

"Mollie, look where you're going," Nina heard a woman scold. She looked up to see that she wasn't much older than Nina herself, she wouldn't have been older than 21 or 22.

"Sorry," Nina apologised. "It was my fault, I was in a world of my own.

"No harm done," the woman laughed, and Nina noticed her British accent for the first time. "Mollie's a magnet for trouble, aren't you sweetheart?"

The little girl just giggled. Nina laughed, picked up her suitcase and waved goodbye to the pair. She then headed in the direction of the showers, desperate to wash off after her long flight.

Ten minutes later, she re-emerged from the bathrooms feeling much better. She headed to the front of the airport to call a taxi, and she was surprised to see that the little girl and the woman (who Nina assumed to be Mollie's mother) were seated at the taxi bay, apparently organising their things.

There was a young man there as well, and Nina had to assume that this was the girl's father. She watched the trio, smiling to herself.

Until she saw the man's face.

It had been over two years, but she could still recognise her first love from a mile away. There was no doubting that the man was none other than Fabian Rutter.

With hot tears stinging her eyes, she picked up her things and went back inside the airport. No wonder he hadn't replied to her voicemail. He had a girlfriend and a kid to worry about, he didn't need her coming back in and complicating life even more.

So that was it, she figured. That was the end. She'd been so stupid, thinking that they could go back to at least being friends. He had moved on, just like she had told him to.

He hadn't waited like she had.

* * *

Two weeks later, two demoralised nineteen-year-olds sat in their homes, one in Cleveland and one in Liverpool. They had both shared the same dream, to be reunited with their first loves, their best friends, and had both been unsuccessful in achieving this.

Maybe it just wasn't meant to be.

* * *

 **I'm really not sure what I think of this, but oh well. Give me your thoughts!**


End file.
